Free OPI test opportunity

[JennyQin]

Both time were taken. No more emails please. Thanks!

[roddy]

This is worth doing, according to previous participants. 

[GregO]

Hi all, I was one of those who took Jenny up on this experience. As those who have commented in another thread regarding taking the OPI, I found the experience helpful. For one thing, I believe that while we language learners usually have a fairly good understanding of our level of ability, we are often prone to erring in one direction or the other with regard to self assessment. In my case, Jenny had 8 separate people rate my performance and their ratings were all the same. While I tend to never feel like my Chinese is as good as I would like it to be (like many or most of the people on this forum), having a sizable number of people provide feedback is nice because It leads me to believe that the results are valid.

 

The test, and my performance on it reinforced to me the importance of  listening and reading. I previously lived in China but have been back in the US for over 2 years. During the past 2 years I have spoken, maybe, 30 minutes total of Chinese. On the other hand, I have continued reading somewhat extensively and listening at least 10 or 15 minutes most days. That said, I found that my speaking ability had not slipped too much. I definitely would have done better, or at least been more comfortable, if I had been speaking regularly - I certainly believe that to be valuable. It is just that the idea of regular input, often discussed on these forums, is so important and seemed, in my case, to buffer against a deterioration in my speaking skills, despite not speaking too much Chinese.

 

Another aspect of this that I find valuable is that it provides a concrete goal to shoot for. It is easier to strive for success when success is clearly defined. Saying to myself, I want to be more fluent, or fully fluent, etc is too fluffy for me - we all know that this idea of fluency is a, well....fluid one :-). Now I can say to myself "I want to obtain a superior level in xyz amount of time".

 

Thanks to the team at Chinese-Forums and to Jenny! I am glad to have had this opportunity. I am happy to respond if anyone has any questions.